The Competition Board fined Google a total of TRY 482 million for the period during which it did not fulfill its injunction recommendations in terms of hotel queries.
Google was fined a total of TRY 482 million for the period during which it did not fulfill the injunction recommendations in terms of hotel queries.
The Competition Authority’s statement is as follows:
In the Competition Board’s decision dated April 8, 2021, Google was imposed an administrative fine of 296 million 84 thousand 899 TL 49 kurus for violating Article 6 titled “Abuse of Dominant Position” of the Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition, on the grounds that Google abused its dominant position in the general search services market, giving advantage to its competitors in its local search and accommodation price comparison services and preventing the entry of competing local search sites.
The Board also imposed certain obligations on Google in order to eliminate the violation and to ensure the establishment of effective competition in the market. In this context, Google was required to ensure that competing local search services and competing accommodation price comparison services would not be disadvantaged from Google’s own related services on the general search results page.
In order to address the concerns pointed out by the Competition Board in the local search services market, Google submitted its proposed measures including new designs for local search services. At the Board’s meeting dated March 21, 2024, it was decided to implement these proposed measures submitted by Google and to monitor them for a period of 3 months. Google stated that these measures were fully implemented as of April 15, 2024.
However, it was determined that Google did not implement the new designs decided to be implemented in terms of local search services in terms of hotel queries, and therefore did not fulfill the obligations imposed by the Board.
In this context, at the Board’s meeting dated May 9, 2024, it was decided that Google did not fulfill the obligations stipulated in the Board’s decision dated April 8, 2021, and therefore, within the scope of Article 17 of Law No. 4054 titled “Proportional Administrative Fine”, it was decided to impose an administrative fine on Google at the rate of 5 per ten thousand of its gross revenues for each day of 2023, starting from April 15, 2024 and continuing until the fulfillment of these obligations.
